UFO sightings reported in High Desert

Tuesday

Jul 10, 2012 at 12:28 PMJul 11, 2012 at 7:12 AM

Tomoya Shimura, Staff Writer

Case 38886:

A couple was standing on the porch at approximately 10:38 p.m. when they saw two orange orbs side by side above the eastern horizon over Apple Valley. Within seconds, the third orb lit up, shaping a triangle hovering near the horizon. Then another one appeared to the right before the first three orbs disappeared.

This is the description the couple reported to the Mutual UFO Network (MUFON) along with a video clip they shot on June 4. It's among 26 UFO sightings reported so far this year in San Bernardino County, according to the MUFON database.

A nonprofit organization investigating UFOs, the MUFON gets about 700 sighting reports per month from all over the country, International Director David MacDonald said. Whether or not these reports are signs of alien spacecraft is a divisive question, but the idea of UFOs keeps fascinating people.

"I think it's the whole concept of other life somewhere else, other civilizations, whether they're like us or how they differ," MacDonald said.

About 90 percent of the reports are explainable by science, he said. Airplanes waiting to land get mistaken for UFOs all the time, along with advertising blimps, satellites, meteors and Venus.

"But it's those 10 percent that make your eyeballs roll," MacDonald said. "They defy logic and our mind and the rules of physics. We would investigate them as far as we can. But at this point, you have to say we don't know. And we have to define them as an unidentified flying object, though it doesn't mean they are extraterrestrial."

"Right now there are people in prison convicted with less evidence than we have to support suspicion that extraterrestrial life is real," he claims.

Most of the UFO sightings are normal things that people see in a way they don't understand, said David Meyer, president of the High Desert Astronomical Society and associate professor at Victor Valley College.

"I've been interested in UFOs, but I've never seen one," said Meyer, who was an Air Force pilot for 21 years. "I see things that are strange. I didn't know what they were, but nothing that I can say was so unusual as to be extraterrestrial."

California, Texas and Florida gets the highest number of sightings, and Southern California is among the busiest because the area has many military installations, said Georgeanne Cifarelli, MUFON's Southern California director. Also in Southern California, many people report Chinese lanterns as UFOs.

Meyer watched the video of the June 4 sighting posted on the MUFON website. He said the orbs looked like flares that military aircraft would drop near Twentynine Palms, though he needed more details to reach a conclusion.

"As a scientist, a former pilot and an astronomer, I'm skeptical of the idea of extraterrestrial on Earth, but I don't discount it," Meyer said. "There are many cases that are really unexplainable in any other way."

I was on a charter bus around 8 p.m. ... My mom told me to look out at the shooting star. When I turned, the light was larger than a typical shooting star and was yellow orange and very bright and hovered in one spot only just above the horizon. A few seconds later it shot straight up into the sky and disappeared. I found it interesting how when it shot up, it was a completely straight vertical path at a speed slightly slower than lightning.

Feb. 5 in Victorville

I just entered Main Street from the grocery store at Main Street and 15 freeway and this blue-green bright light caught my eye. The object was size of an (aspirin), traveling south and when I first saw it, it was over north Victorville (8-9 miles north of Main street and 15 freeway intersection), and within 60 seconds it disappeared.

May 22 in Victorville

At approximately 8:30 p.m., my husband and I went out on to the porch for a cigarette. Our porch faces an easterly direction overlooking the George Airbase. My husband pointed out two flashing red lights directly overhead. At first I assumed it to be a plane. However, they were a fair distance apart, much further than that of any plane I've ever seen. Secondly, I've never seen a plane with two port lights. Usually there is a green light on the starboard side. Thirdly, there was absolutely no sound.

We continued to observe these two lights as they moved slowly in an easterly direction over the George Airbase. The object or lights, then seemed to hover over the northern end of the airbase for a short period of time. The lights were flashing separately, then in time, then differently again. The object or lights then proceeded in an easterly direction toward the mountain ranges. It was then we observed more red lights flashing independently and a fair distance apart, but all traveling in the same direction and all changed direction in unison, which lead us to believe it was many lights on the one object, or a group of lights flying in no particular formation, but together.

At one point we observed four maybe five lights at one time. The object or lights went over the mountain ranges and disappeared.

Source: Mutual UFO Network

Tomoya Shimura may be reached at (760) 955-5368 or TShimura@VVDailyPress.com. Follow Tomoya on Facebook at facebook.com/ShimuraTomoya.

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